Still
by sing-oldsongs
Summary: January through October 1981.  The past that they say they are putting behind them.  SiriusxRemus.  Mentioned JamesxLily.
1. January 1981

_**Summary**__: January-October 1981. The past that they say they are putting behind them. Sirius/Remus. Mentioned James/Lily._

_**Warnings**__: language, drinking, war images, violence, dysfunctional relationship_

_**Other Notes**__: my longest fan fiction project—at least as of now, though my current HP project may grow monstrous and replace it—and one of my more ambitious. Because this is not a recent fic, I read it over now and see little things (awkward phrases or dialogue, some canon-inaccurate details) that I want to change, and am in the process of doing some extra edits; each part will be posted as soon as changes are made—hopefully, updates should be fairly often, as I'm forcing myself not to make any drastic changes._

_**Disclaimer**__: I do not own Harry Potter, any of its characters, including and especially Sirius, Remus, James, and Lily, or any of its settings._

**x**

Remus Lupin is covered in scars, in thin, red, stretching lines of them across his pale skin, more scars than before. He can't help but feel a little self-conscious of them, but Sirius Black doesn't laugh. Sirius Black doesn't take notice of them at all.

**x**

_**January, 1981**_

It was Sirius's smart idea to move in winter, but Remus was the one who felt guilty, because he hadn't put an end to the plans right from the start. No, he had let them go on, until they were finalized to the point of his wrapping an old Gryffindor scarf around his neck and shouldering a trunk up eight flights of stairs to the right floor. He'd had to carry it in from outside, where all of their things, the accumulated possessions of their lives, were sitting in heaps by the dingy brown city snow. There were half melted puddles leaking dirt everywhere, and Remus had slipped twice on the invisible, black ice that lined the sidewalk. After an hour, his fingers turned blue. Literally blue. He thought they might have frostbite, and maybe they'd fall off. Sirius was laughing when he burst through the door.

"Isn't this great, Moony? Isn't it fantastic? Breathe in that new flat air, just breathe!"

"I'm breathing, I'm breathing all right, Padfoot. Tell me again why we're doing this? In winter no less?"

Remus had turned around when he heard the door slam open again, and all the while that they were speaking he was also watching. Watching Sirius, in fact, Sirius and his flushed cheeks and his wild hair and his unbuttoned coat—no gloves or scarf or anything else either, too above the world to feel the cold.

"You're not nearly happy enough," Sirius answered. He frowned, in that puppy dog way of his, the way that made him look more animal than human. He crossed the room to Remus and grabbed him by two hands to the face and commanded, "Be happy."

"I'm trying," Remus's squashed face let out a few squashed words. "But I'm cold."

"Never in my life have I seen you be this weak in such a disgraceful way." Sirius shook Remus's head backwards and forwards in his hands. "Who cares about a little cold?" He squeezed Remus's face into a thinner line. "What we have—what we should be focusing on—is this wonderful new space, big space, space that is _ours_, much more so than that other place was because _this_—" and he spread his arms out and let Remus's poor face rest at last—"this flat is not being paid for with my uncle's money but with _our_ money because we are finally, completely, self-sufficient."

Remus knew this wasn't true. He had been self-sufficient since the moment he stepped out of his parents' home, had finally felt the cold sting of it when he'd gone to their funeral, and Sirius had been out on his own too many years for the sum total of his life so far.

But if it made him happy, Remus would indulge him.

"It's not that I'm not happy—"

"Just happy?"

"_Wildly_ happy, _ecstatic_, bouncing off the _walls_—all of that—about this place, it's just that…well…it's snowing out and ten below and _January_ of all times and—"

"Here you are being a wimp again." Sirius shook his head. "Look, a compromise. There are only a few more boxes downstairs. I'll take them up, and you stay here and…I don't know, make warm cocoa or something, I don't care. When I come back," he stopped suddenly, smiled and raised his eyebrows, and then pulled Remus closer to him again. "When I come back," he whispered in soft, low, close-your-eyes-and-listen-because-it's-Sirius-and-his-voice-just-_melts _tones, "I'll warm you up."

His lips were so close to touching Remus's skin—but then they didn't and he pulled away and the chill Remus felt now was incomparable to any mere frostbite-like sensation before.

Later, wearing warm socks and their feet up against the grate of the fire, hot cocoa half drunk on the side table, and new, lighter, fluffier, whiter snow falling out the window behind them, Remus felt like maybe moving in January was worth it. Maybe. At least with Sirius kissing up his neck he could forget about it a little.

He knew that Sirius was weak sometimes, too. Sometimes he crumbled, for just a few moments, said he couldn't handle things the way they were. He drank and he threw things and he fell against walls and he slammed doors and then locked them, and Remus could hear alternate retching sounds and sobs while he cleaned up the broken pieces and slid them into the trash.

But Sirius always came back. The long hours ended, and he pretended it hadn't happened at all. He always gave the impression that he had everything under control, and the only one that ever saw his cracks was Remus, as he waited on the other side of the locked, door for Sirius to open it again. And when Sirius did come out, they would kiss like they had been separated for years, or like they'd never see each other again. They would hang on to each other with a desperation and a need that was missing from lazy nights in front of the fire, with everything kind of sort of perfect for the day.


	2. February 1981

_**Notes**__: Never been to London. Sorry for possible inaccurate details in that respect. Believe me, if I could fix this, I would_.

**x**

Remus knows that Sirius needs him, still. It is a longing that comes from too many years of solitude and nightmares and missing him. It is an aching that comes back to them in the dark of the room and the dark of the night, in rough bruises left accidentally on skin.

**x**

_**February, 1981**_

Remus never liked Valentine's Day, because for several years he found himself sitting in the common room of Gryffindor Tower with a book, trying to convince himself that he wasn't jealous. Especially, he always added, especially not of the girls Sirius always took out, the ones he walked down the halls with, his arm around their waists and their bodies pulled close to his, that lecherous smile on his face and that longing look on theirs. It was disgusting, really. It was crude.

The sun was streaming through the windows of the bedroom of the flat that Remus still thought of as new. When he reached out a hand for a warm body and his fist closed on empty space and the edge of a sheet, he was forced to open his eyes, and that was when he found the piece of paper on the pillow next to him. He rubbed his eyes and pushed stray hairs out of his line of vision, sat up, and felt the cold air of a warming spell warn off hit his bare skin. The note was short.

_Moony, for some reason I have gotten up early today. I don't know why this is, but it can only be a sign of Immanent Doom. I thought I should tell you that you look very funny while you're asleep, and also, that your hair is too long and you need to shave. I have gone to get breakfast so we won't starve (I thought it a good plan, considering), and will be back soon. Oh yeah, and happy Valentine's Day, you wanker. Padfoot_

Remus felt just a little dumb for smiling, but he couldn't help it. He took advantage of Sirius's absence to take an uninterrupted shower, and was just walking back into the main room—a large expanse of space serving as living room, dining room, and kitchen, all in one—when Sirius burst through the door carrying a large bag of groceries.

"Moony, mate, we have half an hour's worth of hot water a day and you are constantly using up eight times your share. I think maybe now I'll hold your muffin hostage."

Remus's hair was still wet, and he was shivering at the cold of the flat, and one of his feet was still without its sock, and he wanted that muffin, but more than that he wanted Sirius, because it was Valentine's Day and they were alone together all day. No Order work. No James and Lily and Harry. No Peter. No jobs to go to or places to rush off to. Just them. He realized it for the first time right at that moment, with Sirius holding the muffin just out of reach and grinning like a fool.

"I missed you," he said. The words felt strange and foreign from his lips.

"Damn Moony. I just went to get some food."

"That's not what I meant." Remus sighed and tried to drop the subject. He found his way around the still unpacked boxes and misplaced furniture, to the half kitchen where Sirius was standing, with muffins and oranges and ruffled hair. He hadn't worn a jacket, yet the February chill didn't seem to affect him, as if he lived in a world slightly skewed from reality.

"What did you mean, then?" he asked. He was earnest and leaning, and his head was tilting, and his nose moving, too, like a dog's. "When did you miss me?"

"In general. You know what I mean."

They were passing into dangerous territory. Remus could feel it, in the same way that he felt the pull of the moon. He grabbed a muffin and started to eat, still standing up and his gaze anywhere but Sirius, who had stepped back.

"I can't read your damn mind," he said simply. He even crossed his arms against his chest. Remus cautioned a few glances at him, out of the corner of his eye, flickering glances. Sirius was thinking, so deeply that he had turned in on himself. Maybe he was waiting for an answer, still.

When Remus didn't give one, he walked quickly to their room and closed the door.

It was more of a bang, actually, Remus was pondering, as he sat down and finished eating and became content with just being still, and running his nails against the worn tabletop. He had stopped thinking about what would happen with Sirius later—when they tried to dance around making up, not admitting that they had fought in the first place—when Sirius returned. He had pulled on a jacket and a scarf, and he was carrying the same sort of things over his arms. "Here," he said, and dumped the pile in Remus's lap.

"I think this would be an appropriate time to ask what the hell you think you're doing."

"I thought you would know what I mean," Sirius answered. His words were so frigid Remus thought he was angry.

London in February had a certain sort of chill, distinct and all its own, deep enough to pinch at Remus even through his jacket but not bad enough to keep him from wanting to stay right where he was. "I know you don't like the cold," Sirius was whispering to him, right in his ear and his breath against his skin. "But I thought…you know…this is important. I want all of London to know it doesn't matter who they have, I'm living with the best person there is."

It never mattered to Sirius, the things that mattered to other people, the gender or the sexuality or any of it, technical words that glided above their surface. It was always hard to read Sirius, the way he could be thinking anything, the way he looked at things so differently than anybody else. But he knew some things that Remus knew. He knew that two jackets were better than one. He knew that it didn't matter who saw you if you were all wrapped up in somebody else. He knew that Valentine's Day was only ever any good if you were standing outside and it was snowing again and there wouldn't be any more hot water for the rest of the day and nothing else mattered—good or bad or any adjective at all—if you were so close to someone else that you could hear his heart beat. The sound, thick and consistent and reverberating, was not so much a sound at all, as a feeling, a knowledge shared by two people alone.

**x**

end part 2/10


	3. March 1981

_**Notes**: So, **Deathly Hallows** is finally here! This story...has nothing at all to do with Book 7. I thought updating it would be a refreshing change from the last 48 hours or so._

**x**

Remus knows, just as Sirius does, that it's different now than when it was just the two of them. They don't live alone in their own flat now, oblivious to the world for days and weeks at time. People pass through the house day and night, and you never know who knows and who doesn't, who will accept it, and who won't. Remus doesn't like keeping secrets, but he's used to it, long used to it by now, and sometimes he forgets his feelings altogether and just _is_.

**x**

_**March, 1981**_

Remus had never thought of them—any of them, any of the Marauders—as future husbands or fathers. Yet, despite this, he wasn't much surprised when James and Lily got engaged, and he had felt an almost comforting feeling of inevitability when they got married. When Harry was born, he didn't feel much of anything at all. Seeing a person so new and untainted and ready to do anything—his mind spun in circles in a way he'd never known it to do before.

Sirius didn't have a great fondness for children, but he never told Lily this, and he didn't have to tell James. It was easy for new parents to forget. And of course Sirius Black would do anything for James Potter. It was unspoken; it was just how things were.

Remus sank slowly down into the couch cushions. Never had something so old and creaky and filled with rusted springs felt so good. Slowly, he uncurled the tense muscles of his body, and, even more slowly still, rested his head against the back of the couch. He could see the ceiling, which was white and uninteresting and easy to his eyes. He felt a depression on the other end of the couch and—"Hullo Sirius," he said.

"He's asleep," Sirius answered.

"I know."

"I think I'm more tired now than before."

"That's because now you don't have anything to distract you from your horrible…debilitating…fatigue."

Sometime during their short exchange, Remus had closed his eyes. His other senses picked up Sirius's shifting; the low, tired sounds that issued from his throat; and even the way he rubbed his eyes.

"I'm telling you," Sirius said, pulling his feet up after him, resting the heavy weight of his head on Remus's shoulder, "I'm never doing that again."

"Yes, you will," Remus answered, too exhausted for lies, too easily slipping into candid, tired truth. "You will because Harry's going to need adults around for another eighteen years, and because James and Lily are our friends, and because whatever he asks you, you can't refuse."

"I refused when he begged me to sleep with him. He said _I want your sexy body, Padfoot_, and I said _Shove off Potter. I'm with Remus now_."

"That never happened."

"No. It didn't."

Another few minutes of silence passed. Sirius's breath played against Remus's neck. He realized almost sadly that he was twenty-one years old.

"Sometimes I hate them just little bit." Sirius's voice was not quite a whisper, but it was soft and quiet, and very close, just the same.

"Hate who? James and Lily?"

"It would have been easier if—"

"If a lot of things. It would have been easier if a lot of things."

Sirius's arms snaked around Remus, right in the middle of him, latching on, and he didn't answer, only breathed. Remus refused to open his eyes, but he knew just what Sirius looked like. His face had a far off expression and his eyes were looking inwards on himself.

"I'm glad that we can't," he said finally.

"Can't what?"

"Have kids."

_Dammit Sirius_. Remus closed his eyes tightly, relaxed slowly, took a few breaths, and found it in himself to speak. "You could always adopt. You would just have to leave me first."

"I don't want to do either of those things. But honestly, Moony—isn't this a good thing, for once, you being a werewolf? Society is never going to pressure you to procreate a bunch of brats."

Sirius wasn't thinking. He had found an idea, and he ran with it. His mouth was going on and his brain had largely stopped functioning at all. Remus knew all this, and he took a few deep breaths to keep from lashing out.

"No. No pressure there. Honestly, Sirius, can we drop it?"

"Oh. Okay. Yeah. Sorry."

"It's all right."

Remus's eyelids fluttered, and he could feel Sirius's grip on him relaxing, then tightening again.

"It's really all right?"

"Dammit, Sirius, yes. Just rest. He could wake up any moment."

When Remus opened his eyes, the flat was quiet and Sirius was gone. He pulled himself up, saw by the clock that he had been asleep for several hours, and walked in a sort of drowsy haze into the other room. He almost smiled when he saw Harry, still sleeping, with a great black dog on the floor not five feet away, his nose buried in his paws.

**x**

end part 3/10


	4. April 1981

When Order meetings run late, Remus can see the dark circles under Sirius's eyes stand out in sharp relief against the pale of his face. At moments like those, Remus realizes again that Sirius will never look quite the same. He will never be quite the same, either. He gets tired more easily, and arguing wears him out in a way not always immediately noticeable. Remus tries his best to make him forget.

**x**

_**April, 1981**_

Sirius's face was ashen. Remus had learned the word when he was very young, sitting in infirmary beds with his hands bandaged, and his mother by his bed looking anywhere but at his face. The word came back to him at odd times. His first instinct was to _get_ to Sirius, to be near him, and he stood up quickly but moved no farther than the edge of the couch. He felt helpless, suddenly, statue-like. He asked Sirius, in a voice low and thick with urgency, what was wrong.

"I've never seen so many dead in my whole life, Moony," Sirius whispered. He looked straight ahead the whole time, eyes locked to Remus's, until his outstretched, gripping hands found a chair and he sank himself into it.

Remus found it in himself to move, then, and he was next to Sirius in heartbeat speed—in the time it took for his heart, slowed now, it seemed, with fear—to pound against his ribs only once. He knew his arms and hands and touch and presence could do little. He had to try anyway.

He wanted to ask what had happened, and if James was okay, and maybe if Lily and Harry were okay, too, even though they shouldn't be in danger, secluded in the country as they were day and night. But then, nowhere was safe. His thoughts were not even safe, not the way they ran back and forth and into each other, not with the way he could only care about Sirius, who was shaking but not crying, just shaking so hard it was like he was about to burst.

"Diagon Alley," he managed.

"You don't have to say anything."

"Yes, I do. Fuck, Remus, don't you want to know?"

"I do, but—"

"I can manage it!"

Sirius had been doubled over, curled into the space of Remus's chest, but when he sat up and pushed away it was with unexpected force. His eyes were wild and feral. Remus couldn't remember the last time he'd had that feeling, right in the pit of his stomach, not fear but not unlike fear, as easily described as dread as anything else.

"Remus," Sirius managed. "We didn't expect it. James and I, we were just walking. They came out of nowhere."

"They attacked you?"

"No. They were attacking someone else, someone on the street. I didn't even know who he was. Now he's dead."

"Sirius, stop."

They weren't the words he meant, but it was what he felt in his stomach, and in his head, and in his heart.

"Why, _Moony_, are you afraid? You should be. It was carnage. It's how it's going to be from now on. It's how it's _always been_." Sirius was almost laughing, his lips spread in a weird almost-smile, his eyes wide and gleaming.

_Like a rabid dog_, Remus thought.

"Sirius," he said, speech halting, eyes dashing. He reached out and grabbed hold of Sirius's arms, hands gripping the cloth of his shirt, knuckles white with the pressure. "Sirius. Stop. I mean it, just stop talking now."

"There were piles of dead."

"I know."

"I'm never going to stop thinking about it."

"You will."

"No."

"Sirius."

And the whole time, his hands on Sirius's arms.

Sirius wrenched away from Remus's grip suddenly, a wild burst of energy coiled out from fear and anger and pain. He stood up and started walking, stalking, to the other side of the room. Remus caught up to him quickly. He grabbed him from behind and turned him around and held him close again. It was a violent hold he had on him. It was violent the way Sirius started to shake again, struggle at first and then collapse, standing up only because Remus was holding him. They stayed like that for a very long time.

Remus would replay the images for days: the images of people lying in the street, between the flowers sprouting in the cracks of the sidewalk, under the newly blooming trees. There were still patches of snow, but they would be melting fast as Sirius and James walked past them. People would laugh and smile and talk with each other, and maybe there would be hope, that in this war torn landscape some things could still be good.

What about the days Remus had forgotten? What about moving day, Valentine's Day, hours spent with Harry? Had the knowledge ever really left him? There was a new scar right at his collar bone, and he ran his fingers over it, testing the bruise, the pain. It was new spring outside. The bodies were being moved from the streets.

But the worst was Sirius. He was wild, for a moment, he was over the edge. He was maybe not coming back.

No, that was stupid. That was ridiculous. Sirius always came back to him, always.

**x**

end part 4/10


	5. May 1981

Remus is surprised that Sirius still has the energy to pick these petty fights. He himself has long ago given up arguing, tried to give up the past along with it. They have all slighted each other, at one time or another.

**x**

_**May, 1981**_

It started with small fights, back when summer was still new. Sirius would leave the window open. Remus would forget to lock the door. One or the other would ignore various, small chores.

Remus told himself that it was just stress, or the war, or the stress of the war, or any combination of a million other things. He knew the why didn't matter that much, though. It could have been the weather, and the way it was always raining, even though when he was younger he would run through summer rain—the warm air and cool water and damp earth smell—and let the raindrops hit his new scars, take away their itch.

It could have been the war. Yes, the mounting casualty rate, the Dark Marks that burned the sky, the fear. It was the acrid smell of death that followed them everywhere that kept them both so on the edge.

James sat on the carpet of his third flat in three months. He had the real estate section of the _Prophet_ open in front of him, eyes scanning behind his glasses, hair falling across his face, messy and ragged. The important thing, Dumbledore had said, was to keep moving. Eventually, a safe place would be found, more permanent, easier.

"The easier part is just a lie," Sirius growled that night, as he pulled his shirt over his head roughly and flung it across the room. Remus cowered from his sudden rage, but tried not to let it show.

"Just a fucking lie," Sirius repeated. "The whole thing. So that they think they're safe even though they're not."

Outside, the sky was burning.

It took Remus many moments to speak; he stood still, sensing, as the wolf did, when danger was at its height and when it was about to pass.

"The important thing," he said, "is to keep them as close to safe as possible."

"As close to safe…fucking heaven, Moony, that makes no sense."

Even when they fought, he called Remus _Moony_, as if they were still kids. Even when everything disintegrated, Sirius was the master of keeping old feelings alive when they should have long ago been dead.

The next morning there were three different papers spread out across the tabletop and a letter from Peter, to say he would back soon from his journey, and no worries. Peter was so naïve that it hurt. Remus half-wanted to crumple the letter up and throw it away, but Sirius was slouching into the room and into the chair across from him, and he wanted even more to ask what happened to the dishes.

"They're in the sink, Remus, don't have a heart attack about it."

"I was only asking, Sirius." They said each other's names like they were curses. "You were supposed to wash them."

"I got distracted. The whole trying-not-to-be-killed-on-my-way-home thing. It really gets a bloke tired."

Remus's voice was so tired, had been so tired from the very start, and Sirius, he could already tell, with the weariness of habit, was just trying to pick a fight with him again.

"It takes five seconds to say the spell, you know."

"Then you could have done it."

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?" Sirius smashed the _Hogsmeade Herald_ down against the tabletop abruptly and glared. Remus was waiting for him. He had been waiting for him from the start.

"The point is that we're not letting this place go to hell just because—"

"Just because there's a war going on?" Sirius always had that way, that way of making Remus feel like dirt with just one stare, that way of making everything insignificant merely for not being about him. "That seems like a bloody good reason for us all to go to hell."

"Dammit, Sirius, I'm not going to let that happen and neither are you."

Remus always got angry in spurts, in sudden bursts of rage he'd been gleaning, and he yelled the last words with such volume that even Sirius flinched for a second. Remus could feel his anger coiling up inside of him, and he stood up sharply, only half hoping it would pass. Sirius stood up, too, his eyes narrowed and his hands in sharp fists at his sides, a defensive stance, as if he'd been expecting this all along.

"We are not making this a hell on earth for ourselves, don't you understand?" Remus growled. "We're going to keep our lives going so that when it does end—"

He had wanted to say "so that when it does end, there'll be something left for us," but when he looked at Sirius's face, and the mad man gleam to his eyes, and the way his fingernails were digging into the skin of the heels of his palms, the words died on his lips. Maybe it was just a wild, unrealistic hope that there would be even a scrap left in the end.

"When it does end, what?"

He faltered. Dammit. Never let him see your fear.

"They were just fucking dishes, Sirius."

"You brought them up."

Remus's voice was slowing, but Sirius's was still a bark, sharp and hard like a gunshot.

"This is our _life_ now, Moony. This war is our _life_. It comes first. We have to make sure we win; we have to make sure we get what we want." He narrowed his eyes and anger sparked and crackled around him, static, lightning.

"What I want is my old life back."

"That's bullshit. You're just afraid."

_Only of you. Dammit._

"And you're too damned selfish to give a fuck about anybody else."

Sirius just shook his head. Their fights weren't violent, but they were filled with anger so seething and so powerful, it blew up in unexpected ways.

"Fuck you, Moony," he whispered, and then walked just one step closer, and in a burst pushed the table and its papers over, and screamed the words again without the old name at the end.

It was how it always seemed to end--an overflow of useless rage. And then at night Remus would go to bed alone, and Sirius would go out, and when he came back it was past midnight and Remus was halfway to asleep, but not quite. He was awake enough to hear the slow footsteps, the quiet clicking of the door when it shut, the whisper that seemed to be right in his ears though said from faraway. "_Moony_."

"Padfoot."

"I don't want to talk."

And they didn't. They never did. Sirius's sudden weight on the bed brought Remus sitting up and grabbing at his shoulders, lips not really kisses, but bites.

**x**

end part 5/10


	6. June 1981

_**Warnings**__: language, sex_

**x**

Remus is always tired when he comes back from Order trips. He climbs up the stairs to his room and falls onto his bed, and tries to sleep off the wear and tear to his bones. Sirius is there when he wakes up, every time. He always asks how Remus is doing before he asks about anything else, even when Remus can see how much he is desperately, desperately, dying to know what's going on.

**x**

_**June, 1981**_

The sounds of shouting, laughter, a broken Muggle fire hydrant spraying water out into the street, were all just barely audible, but their volume increased as Remus opened up the window to let in the summer breeze. It was the first really, unabashedly, hot day of the year, and he had pushed the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. Sirius had collapsed on the couch with his arm over his eyes, all of his limbs splayed and leaking energy out onto the floor.

They hadn't fought in a week. Remus was counting. He had a little calendar in his head and he marked off the safe days with big red X's, loud and glaring and reminding him of all the previous days he'd left blank.

"I think I'm going to France next week," Sirius muttered. Remus lowered himself creakily to the floor by Sirius's head. The full moon was in six days. He could feel it pulling at his joints: he was achy all over, and movement was difficult.

"Have you ever felt just ridiculously old?" he asked all of a sudden. He probably should have been commenting on Sirius's trip—why he was going, the particulars of it, if he would write to Remus or maybe just forget again, like last time, in that perfectly innocent, it-doesn't-mean-anything way. They probably _should_ have been talking about the trip, as Sirius had mentioned it and all. But Remus's head felt heavy where it leaned against the arm of the couch, and he didn't want to think about details at the moment.

"Every time I think about my mother," Sirius answered. "Or the war," he added shortly. Remus wished he hadn't asked. He could almost feel his bones poking out of his skin, slowly ripping holes in him as he got torn apart.

He almost didn't heard Sirius say, "Or us, sometimes."

"Thinking about us makes you feel old?"

Remus frowned slightly, for a moment. He wished the vague wish of impartiality. He wished he was beyond caring what would happen next.

"Only sometimes." He paused. There was a particularly loud shriek of excitement from outside. "When was the last time we had sex, Moony?"

"A week ago."

"When was the last time we had sex without fighting first?"

A hesitation—Sirius felt it just as Remus did.

"I don't know."

Sirius sighed. He let one hand fall—almost accidentally, but Remus could feel the purpose surging through to him—against Remus's shoulder. Remus stared straight ahead. He didn't even turn as he heard Sirius lean up on one elbow, as he felt Sirius kiss gently against his right ear. He leaned more into the second kiss, this one against his mouth.

Sweat had been burning against his skin all morning, as he turned his attention away from the death list in the _Prophet_, to the rising thermometer and the skyline of the city outside. Sirius was slick with sweat, too; Remus could feel it as they fucked against the hard wooden floor.

It was the same a few days later—same heat, same sweat, same desperation—except this time they were crushed against the dirty white sheets of their bed, and afterwards Sirius just whispered, "I have to go, I have to go," over and over again into Remus's ear until he felt he was in a trance, a perfect trance only broken by Sirius getting up and getting dressed and closing the door with a fatal sort of click behind him. He was on his way to France.

All of their mail was written in secret codes of any number of sorts, and sometimes Remus's mind boggled with the understanding of it. Peter's letters were always rather transparent; he said exactly what he meant, and good thing they were never intercepted, Remus mused. James wrote to say that he and Lily might have found a new place to live, though of course he couldn't give a location, and when Remus went to visit him, he added that there were other witches and wizards there, too, all hiding out.

"It might be just the place for us," he said.

Lily asked Remus, politely at first, to stay for some tea, but Remus insisted that he had to go. He walked to the front hallway, his head beginning to ache, and she followed him.

"What is going on?" she whispered, her voice almost a hiss. "You don't seem like yourself. Are you ill?"

"Almost the moon," he answered, and tried to smile, but she shook her head.

"It's more than that."

He had to close his eyes for a moment, and rub his hands against the lids. "No, it's not. I'm fine, I swear. Go back to James. I'm fine."

She wanted to insist—he could tell—but she couldn't. Harry was crying in the back of the house.

Sirius returned the day after the full moon. The flat was abandoned. Remus was lying in St. Mungo's, half dead.

"I feel fucking old, now," he whispered, when Sirius found him. His skin was paler than the crisp white hospital sheets that he lay on, and there were deep, red, claw marks against his arms, still glistening, it seemed to Sirius, with blood. He couldn't look at Remus's face. He could only stare at the most visible of the wounds that marred his bruised and broken body.

"Really? You look young." Sirius's voice was hoarse and low. His face was dark, and his hands kept clenching together. "You scared the shit out of me," he added. "The flat was completely empty. I didn't know where the hell you were."

"If someone hadn't found me, I'd be dead."

"Don't say that." He sounded more angry than upset when he spoke.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Sirius."

He had closed his eyes, the effort of even a few words draining him, but he could hear the scrape of the heavy hospital chair as Sirius stood up. "No Moony," he answered, dark and solemn as ever, his presence thick and heavy over Remus's bed. "You never lie."

**x**

end part 6/10


	7. July 1981

Remus celebrated, he knows exactly, eight holidays in the twelve years that Sirius was away. He doesn't imagine that Sirius commemorated anything, shut up in his dark and lonely cell, but he never talks about it, and Remus doesn't pry. Sirius loves holidays—Christmas is his favorite, but he'll celebrate anything, really, and he goes all out for all the birthdays of just about everyone he knows.

**x**

_**July, 1981**_

There was something different about James. He had changed, Remus realized. He must have been changing all along (just as Remus himself had been changing, the last few years, into someone new), but it wasn't noticeable until exactly that moment.

It had been two weeks since James and Lily and Harry had moved into the new house, the one James had written about with such high hopes. The whole neighborhood was a veritable safe house for threatened witches and wizards, Remus realized very quickly, and he felt both better and worse that James and his family had found a place for themselves there.

"Are you sure you're up for it?" Sirius asked, before they left.

He had been asking that question about everything since Remus had been released from St. Mungo's, even though that was over a month in the past. He had hoped that after he survived another full moonSirius would let up, and he had, for the most part, but every now and then he fell back into the habit again.

"It's a one-year-old's birthday party. I think I'll survive," he said.

"I was just trying to be considerate," Sirius snapped back. "You don't have to be so bitchy about it."

Remus gritted his teeth and chose not to answer.

The summer was hot—hotter than usual—and their windows were grimy with London dirt. The streets sweltered. They'd gone to Benjy Fenwick's funeral the week before and Remus had almost died himself, slowly melting in the only good suit he owned, as the deceased's short life was remembered and the congregation crossed their fingers for rain. The only thing worse had been standing next to Sirius. He was a cold presence, but Remus would have rather burned forever than feel that chill.

It was good to get out of the city. Lily had charmed every room of the house to be comfortingly cool. She smiled at them when they entered, her very best smile, but there were lines around her eyes and mouth that Remus didn't think had been there before.

It was as he stood next to James, in the living room of the twelfth house his friend had owned in his adult life, that Remus realized how different James had become. He never would have guessed this man to be only twenty-one years old. James, the same boy who had put all of his energy into playing pranks on Slytherins and getting out of classes, was now using that same boundless store to care for another human being. James, who had been selfish and conceited and overconfident, now put himself second, behind his son and his wife and their safety. He stood more stooped over than he used to—maybe, Remus thought, tired of his burdens, or maybe just tired. His glasses were slightly skewed on his face and his hair was more frazzled and unkempt than it had ever been, and his socks didn't match. He was holding his son. He was an adult. He had stepped fully into that adult role, brave as ever, James Potter, and never looking back.

Remus felt small and inadequate against him.

He excused himself shortly, away from the room of young adults and their young kids, away from the suddenly claustrophobic air of it all. He sat down beneath a tree outside and leaned against its heavy trunk. Now that it was evening, the air had cooled considerably, and he pulled down his shirtsleeves even farther to cover his bare wrists.

It wasn't long before Sirius joined him. Sometimes he felt as if Sirius was always watching him, always waiting for him, but it wasn't a comforting presence his old friend supplied to every portion of his life, not anymore.

Sirius didn't say anything at first. They were silent for a great many minutes, a very long time.

"Moony," he said finally. The sound was so quiet Remus wasn't even sure if he'd heard it, or if it was just a slight, evening breeze through the tops of the trees.

"You didn't have to come out here, Pads."

"I know."

There was a time--four years before, when everything about Sirius had become so suddenly new--when they had touched all the time. Their legs brushed against each other during classes. They hid away from the end of year dinner to snog in a deserted hallway. They held hands on the way to work. They kicked each other discreetly under the table during discussions.

They hardly ever touched now. There was an inch of space or more between them as they sat beneath the tree. So it was faintly startling when Sirius moved over, almost imperceptibly, and put his head on Remus's shoulder.

Remus wanted to say something. He opened his mouth but no sound came out.

Then Sirius slowly moved his fingers, and pushed up the sleeve of Remus's shirt, and traced his fingertips across the still-red scars of moonlight scratches shining on Remus's skin.

"Padfoot," he managed, then.

"James's son is a year old, you know. He's beginning to look like him. Or how I would imagine James must have looked like when he was that young."

"I know what you mean. I saw it, too. He'll probably need glasses soon."

They spoke, and their voices were emotionless, were shallow and quiet and airy. The sound melded with the air and disappeared.

"Probably," Sirius whispered.

His touch on Remus's skin made the scars itch, but he didn't say anything. Sirius's hand was moving farther and farther down the length of his arm, and when it got to Remus's hand, he intertwined their fingers together softly. Remus watched with passive interest.

"I just want you to know, Remus," Sirius said, his voice just a little above a whisper, but still quiet, still reverberating in Remus's ear. "I just want you to know, that I love you."

There was a stillness that followed that declaration. It seemed almost as if he were about to say more, but didn't, or couldn't, and when a more concrete silence filtered over them, Remus answered just as quietly back.

"I—I love you, too, Sirius."

There was an odd choking note in his voice, as if he were about to cry.

**x**

End part 7/10


	8. August 1981

Remus would trust Sirius with his life. He doesn't even have to think about it, when Sirius murmurs, _Do you trust me, Moony_ against the dark heavy air of the night. Remus can't see anything with his eyes closed in half sleep. He reaches out for the feel of Sirius's skin. Yes, he thinks, yes, yes, yes, always.

**x**

_**August, 1981**_

The casualties were getting worse. It wasn't just death anymore, but increasing instances of torture, of disappearances, of grief from which there could never be closure. Remus couldn't read the paper anymore. He asked Sirius to stop telling him the latest, but Sirius never listened.

"Carodac Dearborn is gone," he said. He wasn't reading from the _Prophet_, or from any of the other papers that he kept his nose buried in every spare moment of the day. Instead, he was holding a heavy piece of parchment, the kind that Order messages were written on, the kind that had told Remus he would never see his parents again.

"When's the funeral?" Remus asked wearily. His heart was torn with too many bruises and cuts and scars for him to feel the new ones quite so deeply anymore.

"He's not dead," Sirius answered. His voice was so level, so emotionless, that Remus had to turn away, as if that could stop him from hearing the words. They had entered the dog days of summer. The window was open, but it just let in the sweltering city heat, and the loud honks of car horns and shouts of anger and short tempers violently tread upon.

"Or at least we don't know it," Sirius continued. "The Order's lost contact with him. Officially missing. His family's refusing to give up hope."

"That's terrible," Remus whispered. He almost didn't recognize his own voice, its awful detachment, how little he seemed to be able to comprehend the words coming out of Sirius's mouth.

They didn't talk anymore. When they did speak, they fought. It wasn't silly shouting matches anymore. It was seething words and insults, accusations barely grounded in the truth, narrowed eyes and spiteful lashings out.

Sirius hadn't shown up to a meeting on time, and the whole group had almost gotten killed when Death Eaters showed up. Did he want them all to be murdered? Didn't he care about anyone but himself?

Remus hadn't come home until late, and when Peter showed up and asked where he was, they'd called out half the Order to try and find him. Did he realize how many people could have been lost while they wasted their effort on his sorry arse? Was he really that selfish?

Those were the words they said to each other. Those were the sort of charges made. They were just excuses—they both knew it well enough. Remus was angry because Sirius had to bring up the war so often; he couldn't let it go; it was if he _wanted_ it to be around them, always, never stilling or stopping or pausing for breath. Sirius was furious because Remus was so quiet; he took every new tragedy with nothing but a low sigh; it was as if he didn't care that the carnage never ended, only grew, only piled higher till it seemed to reach the very sky with its pale new moon.

Sirius spent most nights sleeping on the couch in the main room, and Remus spent most of his nights not sleeping at all. He stood by the window instead and watched the moon grow from a sliver to a silver sphere in the sky. He felt the old, pounding fear in his chest every time.

Dumbledore asked to speak to Remus separately a few days later, after his return from an information seeking mission to Italy. He didn't know a word of Italian. He had gone with a translator a few years older than he was, who had drank wine with him on terraces and listened to his troubles, and advised him that if his boyfriend was really that awful, than maybe it was time to move on. Remus had smiled softly. Later, he was proud of himself for everything he hadn't done, and he had to pull that pride over, and stretch it thin across, the guilt he felt that the affair had _almost_ happened. The guilt he felt because, maybe, he had wanted it, though he'd never admit it, not even when he saw Sirius's dark shadow fall across the floor.

Remus had never spent much time in Dumbledore's office. He felt automatically like a little kid the minute he stepped in. It had been his first experience of Hogwarts, that room, before he even started to attend: he had been just a little eleven year old boy, sitting between his mum and dad and listening, with hope and fear and wonder, at the special conditions of his education. He might as well have still been that little boy, watching Dumbledore, who was in his turn watching Remus through mystical half-moon spectacles.

"I have some…rather unfortunate news, Mr. Lupin," he started, "which I have already shared with certain other members of the Order, while you were away."

Remus faltered for a moment. Which certain other members? His eyes twitched quickly. "What sort of unfortunate news?"

"It has been my suspicion for some time—a now all-but-confirmed suspicion, in fact—that there is a traitor among our number."

Dumbledore spoke slowly and smoothly, but there was only a hint of the comforting tone his words had often taken in the past. That was the tone he used with children, and Remus wasn't a child any longer.

"Like…" he swallowed. "A spy?"

Severus Snape was a spy. Of course, he was a spy for the Order. Remus hadn't given much thought to the idea that, perhaps, the tactic could work both ways.

"Exactly like a spy, Mr. Lupin, exactly. It is my understanding that this spy, whoever he or she is, has probably been sending information to Lord Voldemort for many months now. It is also a part of my theory that this person is close to James and Lily Potter and is probably informing Voldemort on their whereabouts."

Every time James and Lily moved, Death Eaters attempted an attack. They were always held off, always, but always barely. Remus's stomach sank to his knees.

"I am not sure about any of this," Dumbledore continued. "I am collecting new information all the time. However, everything does seem to lead to this conclusion. That is why I am alerting those close to the Potters that someone they are close to is probably not as he appears to be. It is, you understand, Mr. Lupin, a risky decision to make."

"I understand."

Someone Dumbledore had spoken to already was a traitor. Someone Remus _knew_ was a traitor. His stomach met his toes. He felt sick. A terrifying thought occurred to him.

"Headmaster?"

"Yes, Mr. Lupin?"

"You don't…don't think it's me, do you?"

The flickering lights of the room reflected off the glass of Dumbledore's spectacles. "I don't know whom to suspect, Mr. Lupin," he answered.

Sirius already knew. He had been informed of Dumbledore's suspicions while Remus was away. He said so, quietly, while they ate leftover dinner from James's (Lily had given it to them) on their living room floor. The table, where they used to eat, was too covered with letters and maps and codes and papers to be bothered with any food or drink.

"James and Lily will probably be moving again, soon," Sirius said.

He looked up, his eyes unblinking. Remus couldn't remember the last time Sirius had looked, really looked, at him.

"Yes. Only this time, I suspect nobody will know where they're going," Remus answered.

He looked up, too, and his gaze caught Sirius's, and they sat, simply staring, for a very long time.

**x**

End part 8/10


	9. September 1981

It doesn't happen very often, but every now and then, Sirius tries to apologize. He'll corner Remus in hallways and doorways and in those shared moments in roomfuls of people when they are the only ones who really exist. Remus won't let the words pass his lips. They've said all those sentiments already. They said them many months ago, that night in the Shack, the night when all the suspicions and rumors and untruths finally came forward, finally withered away under the gaze of the moon.

**x**

_**September, 1981**_

Sirius had gone out. He went out a lot, those days, but Remus never went with him, because what would they do? He knew well enough. They would kiss and bite and snarl like animals in back alleyways, stagger into smoky, dirty bars and drink themselves away, and laugh like fools when they were pushed outdoors into the biting fall air. They would Apparate home recklessly in the eyesight of Muggles. They would falter and fall down in bruises, and insult each other carelessly, and the next morning the only thing that would be real would be the swearing and the dirty looks between drinks.

Remus could do well without all of those things.

He felt like he'd been living in the flat for a million years. The air was old and stale. The cold had settled in with the end of August, and now, halfway through September, the harsh wind spent the night blowing debris from the street up into the sky and against their tightly shut windows. The glass would shake and rattle all night long.

Remus pulled on an old sweater from school, but it was suddenly too short and too thin, and it made him feel thirteen again, awkward and clumsy and shy. He couldn't afford that anymore. He pulled it back off again and threw it in a corner. Then he opened the bedroom window and took a deep breath of late night air. He could feel the wolf pulling at his corners, howling in his ears.

The city was good to cover the night noises with traffic and domestic yells from the next floor up. Sometimes, though, even through those things he could feel it: the call, the call against his heart and in his bones and seeping along with his blood.

He grabbed a half drained whiskey bottle from the kitchen and climbed through the window, unto the rusting metal fire escape. He sat cross legged on the edge of the first step and took a long, deep swig. The moon was shining above him, a half full moon. He stared at it, and dared it, with his eyes, to show its full face to him again.

_I'm not fucking afraid of you._

Where was Sirius? The filthy dog, he was probably out drinking his liver to death. Remus's eyes narrowed. The alcohol burned against his veins. Sirius. What was wrong with him? Where was he? What was he doing? Was he with somebody else?

Remus had accused him of so many things in his own mind, to add one more was effortless, was perhaps too easily done. He would place all the crimes in the world on that one man's shoulders, if he could.

Had he been in a more contemplative mood, he might have wondered when the whole affair deteriorated. When had things gone wrong? He realized with an angry sigh that it mattered little. The bottle had been half empty when he'd taken it outside; before long there were only dredges of liquid left at the bottom.

Remus shivered. There were people—not very many, mostly a few late night stragglers—walking on the street below him. He watched them intently, and his eyes narrowed. He wished, suddenly, incongruously, that there were more trees in the city. There had always been trees, all the years of his childhood, their green leaves turning magnificent shades of orange and red, and falling to the ground in heaps, and turning the otherwise desolate landscape of fall into a beautiful place.

They had done such a good job of it, he hadn't even realized the desolation until now.

He growled in disgust and pulled himself up. Stumbled, almost fell. Caught himself in time.

_Maybe it would have been better if I'd just let it all go._

It was a difficult job to pull himself back in through the window again; he felt sluggish and clumsy, and he hit his head twice on the windowsill. Once he had finally managed it, he threw the empty bottle in the trash. He was a little dizzy, and a little sick. He lay down on the bed and stared ahead at the room until it stopped spinning, and when it had righted itself he saw a piece of paper sticking out of the trash on the other side of the bed.

Something Sirius had thrown away. Remus struggled to bring himself upright again, and then he picked it up out of the ashes of all the correspondence they had burned, and he opened it across the stiff lines where it had it had first been folded.

He didn't feel guilty. Sirius had been practically _begging_ him to find it, leaving it out like that, not even burning it to keep it safe.

Never even mind the fact that it was addressed to them both.

_Padfoot and Moony_,

_This is important. That's practically all I can say in a letter. Maybe I shouldn't even be saying that, I don't know._

The writing was sloppy and hurried, and there were ink blots all over the page, as if the writer had left his quill too long against the parchment, trying to decide how best to phrase his words. Even through the worry and the fear, though, Remus recognized James's handwriting instantly.

_Lily Harry and I are going away. We're going to a place where no one can ever find us. I don't know when we'll see either of you again, so I need to say goodbye. It's not_

The words ran out suddenly, and for several lines the only marks on the parchment were crossed out lines and unreadable blotches of ink.

_a real goodbye though, so don't worry, mates, because Potters are tough folks and we survive everything. So anyway, Dumbledore has it all figured out. We want to tell the both of you but, like I said, that's impossible here, so meet me at the old place and I'll explain everything._

_Prongs_

He had scratched a few, almost unreadable, symbols at the very bottom of the page—symbols Remus recognized as the next day's date. It settled like a cold ice pick to his chest that Sirius had hidden this from him. He never would have known to go; he never would have shown up. The fear he felt at the thought of James even writing the word _goodbye_ was quickly swallowed up by bitter hatred, hatred for Sirius and all of his lies.

Remus felt with sudden sureness that there had been a letter to Peter, too, and he felt with just as sudden certainty that Sirius had gotten to that one, too, and the ice pick in his heart turned to fire, and he crumpled the parchment in his hands.

He wanted to think through it. He wanted to be coherent, and logical, and practical, about everything that was swirling around his brain but all he seemed to be able to latch onto was Sirius, leaving at night without him, and Sirius, who was always angry or else cold and cruel, and Sirius, a person he used to trust, keeping things from him, lying to him, deceiving him.

The door of the flat slammed open.

Remus kept the paper in his hand as he stormed into the main room. Sirius had paused at the kitchen table, and he was squinting at one of the maps in the dark and struggling to cast off his jacket, which was halfway on and halfway off.

"Need some help?" Remus asked, and came to stand facing him in the glow of the moon through the window.

"No," Sirius snapped, and finally flung off the coat. He threw it onto the couch. Up close, he smelled of cheap booze and stagnant cigarette smoke. Remus just stood, just stared. "Was there something you wanted, Moony?" Sirius asked coldly.

Remus moved the hand still holding the letter slightly, almost imperceptibly, back. "How much did you have to drink?" was the only thing he said.

Sirius's nose twitched, canine, experimental. "I should be asking the same thing of you." A small, taunting smile, quirked at the corners of his mouth. "Drinking alone, now, Remus? How _pathetic_ of you."

The words didn't affect him. It could have been anybody saying them, because it certainly couldn't be Sirius—not any Sirius he knew, anyway. He moved the hand with the letter back in front of him, held it up and smoothed it out.

"Any particular reason this letter from James ended up in the trash?" he asked lightly.

Sirius paused. It was barely a pause, barely a stutter in his calm, but Remus caught it, quick animal resources and the instinct he had gleaned from so many years of knowing Sirius so well.

"You walked into the room just as I finished reading it," he answered finally, after the half a heartbeat pause. "I didn't have time to set it on fire."

"So that was your plan? To destroy it before I could see it?" Remus's voice was beginning to sound accusing. It had just the slightest bit of bite to the edges—slight, but Sirius could hear it well.

"Yes."

He didn't even sound ashamed when he said it.

"It was addressed to me, too, Sirius."

"I know."

Remus could feel the anger boiling up through him, obscuring his reason, obscuring his rational thoughts. Sirius reached out and took the parchment from his hands. Then he withdrew his wand and lit the letter quietly, lightly, on fire. Remus watched in stunned, frozen amazement as the flame crept up, and up, and up, to Sirius's fingers. Just as it reached them, he dropped the parchment to the ground, and his boot smashed over it, and the flame went out.

He could have let it sit there until the whole flat fell irredeemably to flame, and Remus would have been too shocked and too drunk to do a thing. As it was, there was only a small circle of charred black wood at their feet.

"Now it's gone," Sirius whispered.

Remus paused, looked down, looked up again. He stepped squarely in the ash when he stepped closer to Sirius. He could kill him, if he wanted to, and he wouldn't even need his wand. He wouldn't even need the moon.

It was a testament to them, to their anger, to the way they knew each other inside out and upside down and through and through, that they both felt it: the threat of death, through and through and through, and through them both.

"I don't care what you think," Sirius whispered, and then he repeated the words, slower still. "I don't…care…what you…think."

Then it blew up.

"Maybe you should care!" Remus yelled.

His voice was loud enough to stop the muffled up stairs fighting, to make even the swoosh of midnight traffic outside the window seem to slow. The wind blew harsh against the panes of the windows. 

"Maybe you should care, maybe you should finally give a fuck for someone other than yourself, Sirius fucking selfish Black, stuck in heaven knows what world never thinking about anybody else!"

Sirius had taken a few steps back, but he was hardly beaten, and his eyes caught the light of the streetlamp from the window and glinted, animal like, in the dark.

"And you, Remus. You're any better? You're always running away. You weren't even there when Dumbledore told us someone was ratting on Prongs—"

"I was on a mission—"

"Mission my arse! You weren't there when you were needed and that's all I can see!"

"You've hardly been around all the time yourself. Where have you been all night? Where were you all the other nights? If something had happened—if someone had actually wanted your help—you would be too busy boozing in Muggle clubs for anyone to ever find your sorry bones."

Sirius's lip twitched up in a small, guttural growl. Remus could hear the vibrations of it, more than the actual sound of it, against his bones.

"It makes me laugh to even hear you talk," he answered. His voice was loud but slow, gaining speed and anger and edges as he continued, until Remus's angry, squinted eyes grew wide again in astonishment.

"I bet you know a lot about your help being unwanted," he continued. "How many times has the Order wanted to drop you, just a giant liability, an incongruous sore thumb in any fight against evil you are, _Moony_."

His name, a curse again.

"I mean, really, who would want a _werewolf_ helping them fight Voldemort? He's probably just waiting to recruit you. Another Dark creature for his army—"

Remus punched him.

Sirius staggered and almost fell, but reached for the table instead, and all of its papers fluttered around them in sharp edges and pointed corners as the whole heavy frame of it fell crashing to the floor.

Sirius managed to stay standing.

"You obviously know what you're talking about pretty goddamn fucking well, Black," Remus snarled. His fist was throbbing from where it had made contact, but he refused to let any of his pain show. Another gust of wind, harsher than the rest, threatened to blow the whole window in.

"Fuck you, Lupin," Sirius answered back, and swiped the back of his hand across the eye were Remus had aimed his punch.

His face was all but completely in shadow. Remus couldn't have made out his familiar features even if he'd tried.

"I don't need this anymore. I'm leaving," Sirius continued, and then he turned roughly and headed toward the door. Remus could hear the sound of it slamming shut echoing in his ears for several minutes.

_He'll be back_, he thought faintly, as he fell into the cushions of the couch and buried his head in his hands. His eyes were stinging terribly, but he couldn't tell if he was crying or just shaking. _He'll be back._

Two days later a messenger from The Leaky Cauldron came to collect Mr. Black's things.

**x**

end part 9/10


	10. October 1981

Sirius has scars, too. Only Remus can really tell how deep they go. He realizes that Sirius wants to forget about them. He wants to forget, for a moment or two, about all the reasons that they're there.

**x**

_**October, 1981**_

"So you decided to show up?"

Remus looked up sharply when he heard the voice. The air was quiet and still with the stillness he always remembered from fall, and another stillness, on top of that, the slow decay of many months old death covered in the death of the world. A few trees were still left standing, a few solitary trees that scattered their dull orange and dark red leaves across the ground, and as he walked, he pushed them out of the way with the toes of his shoes. The charred remains of home—though it could never be his home again, could never be the home of the person he'd become, a person as black and burnt and ugly as the background—lay still behind him. Almost nothing had been salvaged. There was nothing recognizable left.

The voice was coming from behind him. He didn't need to look to know who it was, but he turned around anyway, and couldn't help but take a half step back as he saw the sudden apparition balanced on the cornerstone of the destroyed house.

"I didn't think you would," Sirius continued. His voice was level, so devoid of emotion it was if he had drained himself of all feeling, and his face was composed into sharp lines and worry scars and passivity.

He spoke as if he had planned their meeting, and perhaps, Remus thought, he believed he had. But if he had sent a message, Remus had never received it. Rather, he had been sent on Order work to Wales, and had come back to his parents' house on a sort of whim. He wondered that Sirius had picked just that location as a meeting place. They hadn't seen each other since the day after their last fight—the day after Sirius walked out.

They hadn't spoken to each other that day, but they had occupied the same general space, and that alone was almost more than Remus could bear. The air had been cold and thin. It was the four of them again—no Lily, no Harry, no anybody else—just the four Marauders, all grown up. Remus had realized very clearly that the era must end in the same place it had begun: in the Shack, where he had known his first real friendship with these three other boys, first understand what friendship meant as they faced each other in animal simplicity, the rawest feelings and the simplest loyalties. It had begun in that way, and it must end in that way, and it was indeed the end. He could smell it in the broken furniture and the rotting wood. He could hear it in the way James spoke to them, in a voice not unlike the one he used when outlining complicated pranks, but without the hint of a smile, almost unnoticeable, at the corner of his mouth.

One more move, he'd said. One more moment of secrecy. One person, with the power of three lives in his hands.

Even in their innermost circle, there was only one choice for whom it would be.

If he had known that Sirius had asked to meet him, now, Remus couldn't say what his answer would have been. He couldn't have let the opportunity pass by. He still felt sick with the thought of James, and Lily, and Harry, and the suspicion that he couldn't put to words, even still. But he couldn't have said yes, either; he couldn't have agreed to any requests from this man anymore.

"I'm here," was all he said. Then he took another drag off of his cigarette, and threw it into the leaves, and ground it out with his foot.

"I didn't know you smoked," Sirius said. He tried to speak as lightly as possible, but Remus could hear the strain in his voice, still, the anger and the fear beneath it all. He jumped off crudely from his perch on the ruins of Remus's life, and alighted amid the scattering of leaves and dead grass.

"I don't," Remus answered.

"So there are still some things I know about you, at least."

There was a hint, a hint of something in those words. Remus hid his hands in his pockets. He didn't try to move any closer, and he didn't run away.

It was like facing a wild animal, he thought. You had to be careful. You couldn't provoke it, and you couldn't show fear. After all of those months, he had finally learned that very secret practice of keeping fear hidden away from the surface.

Remus wanted to answer that _he_ certainly didn't know _Sirius_ at all, but he didn't. He couldn't quite. He choked on the first word when he finally spoke: "So it's done?"

"Yeah." Sirius didn't even have to hesitate. He knew well enough what Remus meant. It was the only thing left between them now, it seemed: that small, curling tendril of mistrust, wrapped in the pretext of worry and compassion, hidden in the powerful magic Sirius kept coiled around his heart.

As he said it, he pulled a packet of cigarettes from his own jacket pocket, and lit the end of one with his wand. Remus had known Sirius to smoke before, but only very rarely. He had smoked the night of James's bachelor party, the morning he had learned of Regulus's death, after particularly difficult battles, after some of their worst fights.

Now, he exhaled a long trail of smoke upwards into the sky, a curling of gray above both of their heads.

"You're James and Lily's Secret Keeper," Remus continued, not a question, not quite completely a statement, but said so flatly that the reassurance he was asking for might easily have been missed.

Sirius's eyes shifted to him, shifted back, annoyance rippling through him at the redundant, useless question.

"Yeah," he answered again, watching the smoke still, watching the air. "I'm James and Lily's Secret Keeper."

After that, they fell into a silence of several long moments. Remus stared at the remains of his parents' house again, imagined the fire starting up again and destroying it again, and destroying that part of him again, and spreading farther and farther and farther. He closed his eyes. His skin burned. A wind flew around them briefly, and stirred the leaves at Remus's feet.

"You're the one who wanted to meet," he said finally. He was beginning to get the feeling that he was part of one big trick, the last prank of Monsieur Padfoot, the butt of a final joke.

Sirius hesitated. It was the first real hesitation Remus had seen in him in a very long time. He threw his own cigarette out, only half gone, into the ground, and as he crushed it out with the heel of his boot, he took a step forward. Remus wanted to reach for his wand but—

"You look sick." He might as well have been saying _you look like shit,_ for all the compassion in his voice.

"The full moon is next week," he answered, and started walking carefully, casually toward where Sirius stood. By the time he stopped they were irredeemably, physically, closer. "It's Halloween night this month."

"I know."

A hint of defensiveness, a hint of anger.

He dropped his eyes. "I mean—"

"Sirius."

He had to say it. He couldn't bear to hear him talk. How had it happened—why had he done it—why had he closed the gap between them so that now he could look squarely into Sirius's eyes? He unfocused his gaze, refocused on the black ash and burned wood and stone beyond Sirius's shoulder. Barely anything had been recovered. Not even the bodies.

Sirius was shaking his head. "Moony." There was sadness, regret, anger, accusation there. "_Moony._"

"Padfoot." He kept his voice steady. It wanted to break. He wanted to hit Sirius, he wanted to punch and kick and maybe even kill this man in front of him, this man he didn't know.

He kept all of his emotion in. He hid away; he hid away because it was the only thing he knew how to do. Sirius was decaying in front of him. A part of him wanted so badly, so desperately, for it to stop, that he took one step closer, and the leaves cracked under his feet.

"Are you expecting me to kiss you, Moony?"

It was a taunting comment. Sirius's voice was thick, was rough with hatred and disgust. Remus knew he wasn't going to be treated, anymore, like he used to be treated in school.

"No. I'm expecting you to walk away like you always do."

"You think you know me that well, do you?"

Sirius's voice walked a thin line between soft whisper and low, gravel covered, threat. He was almost smiling: low, sadistic, cruel.

"I am absolutely certain, Padfoot—Sirius—that I don't know you at all," Remus whispered back at him. He found himself staring into Sirius's black, black, eyes, and his own eyes narrowed in answer. "Now you're the one who wanted to see me, and I want to know why you picked here, why you picked now, why you picked any place and any time at all."

Sirius shook his head. He stepped back again, dropped his hands in exasperation to his sides. "I don't even know anymore." He was almost laughing, all confusion and insanity, and Remus felt all the hatred he had inside radiating toward Sirius, reaching toward him. "I don't know what I thought seeing you again would do. I guess it's too late now. I guess it's just…too late."

And Remus wanted to say something—he even opened his mouth to try—but, as quickly as he'd appeared on the cornerstone, Sirius Disapparated from view.

Remus shook his head. The ground was spinning; he was sick. He stumbled over to the ashes. He fell down on the blackened granite of the doorway where the wooden front door used to be, and he closed his eyes as tight as they would close and waited until the earth stopped spinning.

**x**

Remus Lupin is covered in scars. Some of them stretch across his skin, and others burn into his heart, but only the first are the visible ones. He has learned to live with these marks; they identify him; they define him. Only one person knows the sources of these definitions, and as Sirius Black traces the red lines of the visible across the skin over Remus's ribs, he whispers the words of the past and the present against Remus's heart. He is not asking for forgiveness, because Remus will not let him, and he's not offering it either, because he's given all of the forgiveness he has, even and especially to Remus, many years ago. The past still lingers around them sometimes. It whispers by like a faint breeze through the room, where moonlight pushes away darkness and they lie tangled together awaiting the sun.

**x**

end part 10/10


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